Choosing Affiliate Products
Important *** Find a market first and then find a product to satisfy that market's needs.
One of the first rules in making money through affiliate marketing is to be market led and not product led. This means you must first identify a group of people who were looking for a solution to a problem and then find a product that they will want to buy. In this way you know there are people who want to buy and you only have to sort out which product they will buy the most. If you use a product led approach where you pick a product you want to sell before finding people who want to buy it, you can very easily end up wasting lots of time and money trying to sell something that nobody actually wants.
There are a number of ways to find out what people want to buy.
- Keyword Research
Keyword research is where you study what people are typing into the search engines to try to find groups of people searching for similar solutions. You'll need an account with one of the keyword research databases (we strongly recommend nichebot.com) and some training in how to identify potential markets (again nichebot.com coverers all the techniques in great detail). - Copy of the Experts
If you look around affiliate marketing websites you'll be able to sign up for a large number of newsletters. As part of the newsletter process you'll be offered lots of products. By looking at what the experts are trying to sell you can be reasonably sure that it's worth having a go with those products yourself. You can also find affiliates directly on search engines. Many affiliates use Google adwords to market products (the links across the top and down the right of a Google results page). A great product that helps you monitor and these affiliates is AdSpyPro-. - Keeping your ears open
By keeping an eye on new product releases, new fashions, etc you can see groups of people wanting to buy certain products. For example if a new type of diet is being talked about in the papers people will want to find out more about it. It may also make people think more about losing weight so they will go out to find other products. By watching that these trends and getting suitable products online quickly you can pick up a good number of sales. - Seasonal trends
There are always certain times of the year when certain products become popular. Again keyword research will help you find these products as well as your own common sense (to make sure you backup any guesswork with proper research!!).
Once you've identified a market and worked out what sort of item they want it is time to look in your affiliate programs for suitable products. If you've done your research well you should be able to identify and narrow range of items quite quickly.